


The Doors of Perception

by Corycides



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:03:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A cool hand slapped her cheek. A needle pricked her arm. Charlie opened her eyes and flinched, bright light washing out the world into whites and blues, and sucked in a lungful of...air. Of course it was air, it just didn’t taste like air. She’d never realised air had a taste until now, when it tasted like nothing.</p><p>‘Good girl,’ a woman said, distantly pleased. ‘Sit up. Drink this.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Doors of Perception

Her stomach was wet. Charlie leant back against the ruined wall, sweating and breathless, with one hand digging a handful of shirt into the hole in her side. Pointless. She knew that. Most of the blood was oozing out through the hole in her back.

Nothing hurt, but it felt wet. That was weird.

She coughed and spit blood, dribbling it down her chin. Tilting her head back against the rough brick she closed her eyes and listened. Maybe if she’d lost the Patriots in the ruins...what? Her mouth twisted bitterly at the thought. Miles was dead. Mom was gone- big surprise. Jason had chased sides - again, surprise! - and after Miles died, Monroe had just walked off the chessboard.

If she survived, it wouldn’t be for long.

Charlie belted her jacket tight over her stomach. Her fingers, cold and numb, fumbled the buckle, but got the job done. She wiped Uncle Miles sword as well as she could, trying not to hear his voice complaining in the back of her head, and left it leaning against the wall. It was the best memorial she could manage.

With the heavy weight of Bass’ gun in her hand, wrists already tired (from the gun, or blood loss - she supposed it didn’t matter now), she took one last, deep breath. It was starting to hurt. Everything hurt. She ignored it, pushing herself to her feet and lunging from behind her shelter.

Jason.

Anger and the sharp edges of a broken, or at least battered heart, jerked the gun towards him and she pulled the trigger. One. The grizzled Patriot that said he was her grandfather. Two. Keep moving, don’t give them a sitting target. A stranger. Three.

Then she stumbled, legs weak and knees suddenly forgetting how to knee, and the bullets hit her. One. Two. Three.

She crumpled to the ground, and the world shattered around her in blocks and shards. Colour leeching away.

* * *

A cool hand slapped her cheek. A needle pricked her arm. Charlie opened her eyes and flinched, bright light washing out the world into whites and blues, and sucked in a lungful of...air. Of course it was air, it just didn’t taste like air. She’d never realised air had a taste until now, when it tasted like nothing.

‘Good girl,’ a woman said, distantly pleased. ‘Sit up. Drink this.’

Charlie obeyed - mostly because she couldn’t think of anything else to do. The glass the woman gave her was flimsy, crumpling and crackling under Charlie’s fingers. She spilled the blue down herself, paper gown sticking to her skin and ripping when she wiped at it. The woman, pinch-faced under scraped back, bright red hair, frowned at her. She got another cup and a more insistent, ‘It’s important you drink this.’

She watched, waxy red lips pursed, as Charlie compliantly gulped down whatever it was. When she looked away Charlie turned her head and spat the sharp mouthful of liquid into a nearby plant. As she quickly turned back around she saw Monroe - he was here? where were they? - watching her with those metal-cold eyes. He wiped his thumb over his mouth.

Charlie dropped her eyes first. Whatever was going on was confusing enough without adding trying to work out what Monroe was thinking. She sat mutely as the nurse poked and prodded at her, taking blood and looking in her ears. Everything was repeated out loud, the woman tilting her chin down to speak into the ugly brooch on her collar.

Sat-link, Charlie corrected herself. The nurse was using the sat-link to relay information to her handlers. The knowledge sat strangely in her head. Organic, but not connected to anything around it.

Finished with the exam, the nurse handed Charlie a neat square of pale blue material and told her to get dressed. Charlie slid off the cot and scrambled into what turned out be a jumpsuit, her fingers sealing the front without paying attention to her confusion. Her skin flushed hot with embarrassment, but the room was full of people scrambling obediently into their clothes and no-one was looking at her.

She was bare between her legs, her sex smooth and bald as an old man’s head, and there was a starburst scar on her knee that she’d never had before. It was only when she bent down to pull her boots on that she realised her hair was gone too. Panic pushed at her chest, like a scream trying to muscle its way out.

No. Play it cool. They couldn’t know

It sounded like her, but...different. Sharper, the words slurred on the edges.

Who?

That the voice wasn’t ready to tell her.

‘Hands,’ the nurse said.

Charlie lifted her hands, palms together and fingers laced, like she’d done this a hundred times. It helped hide that her hands were shaking. The nurse slapped two small metal discs on the backs of her wrists. There was a sharp jab of pain between the bones of her arm, down into her hands. When she unlinked her fingers, pale fire limned her wrists and linked her hands.

Handcuffs. Those she recognised on her own.

Job done, the nurse left and four guards - their olive green uniforms reminiscent of the militia uniforms - harried them into a lines. Charlie shuffled into place, keeping her head down and her eyes on the scarred toes of her boots. Until she worked out what was going on, she had to just...wait.

The one time she looked up she saw her Mom. Rachel glared at her and spat on the ground, dislike wrinkling her face and creasing the scar on her cheek. Eyes down, it seemed safer.

Poked along by batons, a low-level shock twitching through Charlie’s nerves on contact. She looked around from under her lashes as they walked. It reminded her of the Tower, a huge hollow cylinder criss-crossed with narrow metal walkways that echoed under foot. Machinery covered the walls, components shifting and realigning in constant movement.

It was a trap big enough to sleep in.

‘Matheson,’ a guard snapped.

Charlie twitched, looking up, but it was Miles who got dragged out of line and shoved into a narrow cell. He had a black eye and split eye. That was Miles, making friends wherever he went.  Charlie caught his attention as they slammed the door, but she couldn’t tell if he knew her or not before the door slammed shut.

They called her Mills, not Matheson, and shoved her into a cell on her own.

‘No trouble,’ the guard said. He jabbed the baton against her thigh, making her stagger as her muscles clenched into rock-hard knots. ‘If we get a repeat of last time, I’ll toss you onto topside detail myself. I don’t care who your Dad is.’

She did.

If it was Dad. If ‘Dad’ was Ben, she didn’t care how starched and horrible this new world was. She held her tongue though, stepping back, and the guard eyed her suspiciously before slamming the door. The lock engaged, the inside of the door flowing in interlocking gears and knots, and the back wall of the room opened like an eye.

‘My god,’ Charlie whispered.

They were under the sea. Lamps lit up the water immediately surrounding the...prison? Charlie could see the cracked ocean floor and the thick forests of seaweed that stretched back into the darkness. Tiny fish darted back and forth, nibbling at the lichen on the glass, and just beyond the puddle of light bigger, hungrier shapes arrowed through the water like shadows with intent.

Despite her simmering terror, Charlie couldn’t resist pressing her nose to the cold glass. She watched a...thing…scuttle across the seabed, stirring up sand with long, flexible tentacles it used like legs.

They turned the lights out eventually and Charlie sighed, stepping back. In the window, Charlotte Mills looked back at her. She didn’t look much difference. There were holes in her ears where studs would go and she kept twisting her tongue, remembering a stud there. Her face looked...sharper, her jaw tighter.

Black ink hooked over her collarbones like a necklace.

She touched it with her fingers, tracing the lines of Monroe’s signature M with disbelief. There were bits and pieces of knowledge in her head, she knew where she was and what an octopus was. It wasn’t connected to anything about her own life, though. She didn’t know who Charlotte Mills was, other than a woman with really bad taste in ink, or why the hell she was in prison.

Although an association with Monroe might explain that. It was like the back story Drexel had given her to kill his enemy, useful but not real.

Charlie sat down on the narrow platform that was her bed. There were no blankets or mattress, but the slab moulded itself to her ass and the room was a clammy skin temperature. She leaned forwards, bracing her elbow on her knees, and scrubbing her fingers over the cropped fuzz of her hair. Tears squeezed out past the lump in her throat and ran down her face, dripping from her chin onto the hard, black ground.

Maybe she was mad, or maybe she was dead. Maybe this was hell. That would make more sense.

  
  
  



End file.
